Gilas Pilipinas young gun Carl Tamayo has also been ruled out of the February window of the 2023 Fiba World Cup Asian qualifiers.
University of the Philippines Maroons coach Goldwin Monteverde confirmed to Spin.ph the news on Friday evening.
"Carl won't play also [for this window]," he said in a short text message.
Tamayo begging off from the Gilas pool followed news that Baltazar had begged off from the Gilas campaign through La Salle coach Derrick Pumaren.
The twin developments come as a big blow to coach Chot Reyes' hope of putting up a solid team for the qualifiers in a short amount of time.
Mature beyond his years
Tamayo was impressive in his seniors debut, showing grit beyond his years during the 2021 Fiba Asia Cup qualifiers in Clark in June as well as in the Belgrade Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
Now, though, the 6-foot-7 rookie is shifting his attention to the Fighting Maroons as they prepare for the upcoming UAAP Season 84.
Tamayo, alongside former NU Bullpups Gerry Abadiano and Terrence Fortea, are poised to be crucial pieces in UP's future. The team is in the middle of its bubble trainings at Epsilon Chi Center inside the UP Diliman campus.
"Our team is composed of 12 rookies and we entered our bubble this January and have only began our team practices last week. The team barely knows each other and we need to focus on the upcoming UAAP this March," said Monteverde.
"We are currently in a bubble set-up and we are required to undergo a seven-day quarantine period before we can join our practices again. With this situation, it would be really hard for the team to let anybody from the bubble leave because it will take a lot of time for them to be able to join us again."
That keeps Reyes' pool limited with only naturalized player Ange Kouame, pool members Dwight Ramos, Juan Gomez de Liano, William Navarro, Tzaddy Rangel, and Jaydee Tungcab, and his players from TNT Tropang Giga at his disposal for the Group A games in the qualifiers.
